Your Social Media Plan Should Cater to Your Strengths

Before you start using social media to promote your business, you need to develop a strategic plan. What purpose will your social media strategy have? What goals have you set? How will you measure those goals?

Those are all important benchmarks you need to consider

It really doesn’t matter which sites you are using, it is still important to develop an effective strategy. You should also analyze the strengths (and weaknesses) of your business. Will you have the time to monitor your Facebook or Twitter page? Do you have something to offer people via a blog? Will you be able to engage in discussion in the comments section? Do you foresee people asking questions or seeking to take the conversation further? Are you equipped to deal with that situation if it arises?

All of those, and more, should be a part of your social media strategy. You will be better able to focus your strategy if you plan these various elements ahead of time and anticipate various questions that could come up as you pursue your strategy. It will also help you to decide what social media sites you wish to target.

You don’t need to waste your time signing up for every single site, and you simply won’t have time to maintain a presence on every social media site. But you can determine what your needs and your strengths are, and focus your social media plan, accordingly.

If one of your strengths is compelling images or artwork, sites like Pinterest or Tumblr showcase artwork rather well. If you have a series of interesting advice you’d like to share, consider blogging or even video blogging on YouTube.

If you want to interact directly with people, in “real-time” and solicit feedback, Twitter is good for communicating directly with whoever your audience may be.

Setting Social Goals for Your Business

If you are planning on building a social media strategy for your business, there are a few things you should keep in mind. It is entirely possible to develop a social media strategy and devote time to social media, and not actually accomplish anything. You need to have a strategy for your social media plan that will help it develop your business, otherwise, you will just be wasting time.

One handy thing to do is to set goals for your social media strategy. Many people set goals when they start using social media to build their business. The important thing to consider, however, is to set goals you can actually control. Despite what people may say, it simply isn’t possible to guarantee that people will follow you, or like your page, or retweet you. If you set goals that call for a certain number of followers, or retweets, or likes, you are setting yourself up for failure.

What you should do is set goals for things that you can control. While you might be unable to control how many people like your Fan Page on Facebook, you can control what pages you like and what comments you leave on other people’s pages. Instead of counting how many retweets you get, you should set a goal for how many people you retweet, and how many people you respond to in an attempt to engage in a conversation.

The other thing you should consider is focusing on social media sites you can succeed in. There are a million social media sites. Which ones do you feel comfortable on and will help your business? Focus on those.

That doesn’t mean neglect to learn about anything new. It means to concentrate your time and energy on developing one or two great sites that you know you can engage on, and use spare time to learn about others.